‘I thought we’d live happily ever after, you know? She was a young, pretty, kind woman … But after the boy was born she started acting strangely. She grew sad, she never smiled, she wouldn’t even hold him, she said she wasn’t ready to love the boy, and that he rejected her. Nothing I said did any good. I told her she was talking nonsense – of course the boy loved her – but she only grew sadder. She was sad all the time. She kept the house tidy, she did the cooking, but she never smiled; she even stopped sewing, and the rest of the time she slept. She kept the shutters closed, the way I do now, and she slept … I’ll never forget how proud we were when we first bought this place. She made it look so pretty: we painted the walls, planted window boxes … Life was good. I thought nothing would ever change. But a house isn’t the same as a home, and this became her tomb … Now it’s my turn, although they call it house arrest, and the lawyer says they’ll let me serve out my sentence here. I lie here every night, unable to sleep, smelling my wife’s blood below my head.’
Amaia looked intently at the sofa. The cover didn’t go with the rest of the décor.
‘I had it recovered because of the bloodstains, but they’d stopped making the original fabric so they used this one instead. Otherwise everything’s the same. When I lie here, I can smell her blood beneath the upholstery.’
‘The house is cold,’ said Amaia, disguising the shiver that ran up her spine.
He shrugged.
‘Why don’t you light the boiler?’
‘It hasn’t worked since the night of the storm, when the power went.’
‘That was over a month ago. You mean to say you’ve been without heating all this time?’
Yáñez didn’t reply.
‘What about the people from social services?’
‘I only open the door to the fellow who brings the trays. I told them on day one that if they come round here, I’ll be waiting for them with an axe.’
‘You have plenty of wood. Why not make a fire? There’s no virtue in being cold.’
‘It’s what I deserve.’
Amaia got up and went out to the shed, returning with a basket of logs and some old newspapers. Kneeling in front of the hearth, she stirred the cold ashes to make space for the wood. She took a box of matches from the mantelpiece and lit the fire. Then she sat down again. Yáñez stared into the flames.
‘You’ve also kept your son’s room just as it was. I find it hard to imagine a man like him sleeping there.’
‘He didn’t. Occasionally he stopped for lunch, and sometimes supper, but he never spent the night. He would leave, then come back early the next day. He told me he preferred a hotel.’
Amaia didn’t believe it; they had found no evidence of Berasategui staying at any of the hotels, hostels or bed and breakfast places in the valley.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I think so, but I can’t be a hundred per cent sure – as I told the police, my memory is worse than I let on to social services. I forget things.’
Amaia plucked her buzzing phone from her pocket. The display showed several missed calls but she ignored them, scanning through her photos until she found the right image, then touching the screen to enlarge it. Averting her eyes from the photo, she showed it to Yáñez.
‘Did your son ever come here with this woman?’
‘Your mother.’
‘You know her? Did you see her that night?’
‘No, but I’ve known your mother for years. She’s aged, but I recognise her.’
‘Think again, you just told me your memory isn’t so good.’
‘Sometimes I forget to have supper, or I have supper twice because I forget I’ve already had it, but I remember who comes to my house. Your mother has never set foot in here.’
She slipped the phone back into her coat pocket, replaced the dining chair, pulled the shutters to and left. As soon as she was in the car, she reached for her phone and, ignoring the insistent buzzing, dialled a number from her contacts list. After a couple of rings, a man answered.
‘Could you please send someone to fix a boiler that broke down on the night of the storm,’ she said, and gave him Yáñez’s address.
3
By the time Amaia parked in the square next to the Lamia fountain, the drizzle had turned to a downpour. She pulled up the hood of her coat and hurried through the arch into Calle Pedro Axular, following the sound of raised voices. The anguish and urgency of those missed calls was reflected in Inspector Iriarte’s face as he struggled to contain a group of people intent upon approaching the patrol car. In the rear passenger seat, a weary-looking individual was sitting with his head propped against the rain-beaded window. Two uniformed officers were unsuccessfully attempting to cordon off the area surrounding a rucksack, which lay on the ground in the middle of a puddle. Amaia took out her phone and called for back-up as she hurried over to assist them. Just then, two more patrol cars advanced across the Giltxaurdi Bridge, distracting the angry mob, whose shouts were momentarily drowned out by the wailing sirens.
Iriarte was soaked to the bone, and as he spoke to Amaia, he kept wiping his brow to stop the water going in his eyes. Deputy Inspector Etxaide appeared out of nowhere with a large umbrella, which he handed to them, then went to help the other officers pacify the crowd.
‘Well, Inspector?’
‘The suspect in the car is Valentín Esparza. His four-month-old daughter died last night while sleeping over at her maternal grandmother’s house. The doctor registered the cause as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. So far, a tragedy. Except that yesterday, the grandmother, Inés Ballarena, paid a visit to the police station. Apparently, the baby was staying the night with her for the first time because it was the parents’ wedding anniversary, and they were going out to dinner. She was looking forward to it, and had even prepared a room for her. She fed the baby and put her down for the night, then fell asleep in front of the television in the sitting room next door, although she swears the baby monitor was on. She was woken by a noise, and went to look in on the baby – who from the doorway appeared sound asleep. Then she heard the crunch of tyres on gravel outside. She looked through the window in time to see a large, grey car driving away. Although she didn’t see the number plate, she assumed it was her son-in-law, as he has one just like it,’ said Iriarte, with a shrug. ‘She claims she checked the time and it was just gone two in the morning. She thought the couple must have driven by on their way home to see if any lights were on. This didn’t strike her as odd because they live nearby. She thought no more about it, and went back to sleep on the sofa. When she woke up, she was surprised not to hear the baby crying to be fed, so she went into the bedroom where she found the child dead. She was upset, she blamed herself, but when the doctor gave the estimated time of death as between two and three in the morning, she remembered waking up and seeing the car in the driveway. She now believes she was woken by an earlier noise inside the house. When Inés asked her daughter about this, she told her they had arrived home at around one thirty; she doesn’t drink usually, so a glass of wine and a liqueur after the meal had knocked her out. However, when Inés questioned the son-in-law, he became agitated, refused to answer, flew into a rage. He told her it was probably a couple of lovebirds looking for a secluded spot; it wouldn’t have been the first time. But then Inés remembered something else: she keeps her two dogs outside and they bark like crazy whenever a stranger comes near the house, but they didn’t make a sound last night.’
‘What did you do next?’ asked Amaia.
Whether it was because they were intimidated by the police presence or simply wanted to get out of the rain, the crowd had retreated to the covered entrance of the funeral parlour. A woman at the centre of the huddle was embracing another, who was screaming and sobbing hysterically. It was impossible to make out what she was saying.
‘The woman screaming is the mother, the one with her arms around her is the little girl’s grandmother,’ Iriarte explained, following Amaia’s gaze. ‘Anyway, as
I was saying, the grandmother was in a terrible state. She couldn’t stop crying while she was telling me her story. To begin with, I thought she was probably just trying to find an explanation for something that was difficult to accept. This was the first time they let her babysit, her first grandchild, she was distraught …’
‘But?’
‘But, even so, I called the paediatrician. He was adamant: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The baby was premature, her lungs weren’t properly formed, and she’d spent half of her short life in the hospital. Although they’d discharged her, this past week the mother had brought her to the surgery with a cold – only a sniffle, but in a premature, underweight baby, the doctor had no doubt about the cause of death. An hour ago, Inés turned up at the station again, insisting the girl had a mark on her forehead – round, like a button – which wasn’t there earlier. She said that when she pointed it out to her son-in-law, he snapped at her and insisted they close the coffin. So I decided to take a look for myself. As we entered the funeral parlour, we bumped into the father, Valentín Esparza, on his way out. He was carrying that rucksack’ – Iriarte pointed to the wet bundle sitting in a puddle – ‘and something about the way he was holding it struck me as odd. Not that I carry a rucksack myself, but it didn’t seem right.’ He clasped his hands to his chest to imitate the posture. ‘The minute he saw me, he turned pale and started to run. I caught up with him next to his car, and that was when he started to yell, telling us to leave him alone, saying he had to finish this.’
‘To take his own life?’
‘That’s what I thought. It occurred to me he might have a weapon in there …’
Iriarte crouched down beside the rucksack, giving up the shelter of the umbrella, which he placed on the ground as a screen. He opened the flap, pulling the toggle to loosen the drawstring. The little girl’s dark, wispy hair revealed the soft spot on her head; her skin had that tell-tale pallor, although her mouth, slightly open, retained a hint of colour, giving a false impression of life, which held them transfixed until Dr San Martín leaned in, breaking the spell.
While the pathologist removed the sterile wrapping from a swab, Iriarte gave him a summary of what he had told Amaia. Then San Martín crouched next to the child’s body and gently used the swab to remove the make-up that had been hastily applied to the bridge of the baby’s nose.
‘She’s so tiny.’ The sorrow in the usually imperturbable pathologist’s voice made Iriarte and Amaia look at him in surprise. Conscious of their eyes on him, he immediately busied himself examining the mark on the child’s skin. ‘An extremely crude attempt to cover up a pressure mark. It probably occurred at the precise moment when she stopped breathing, and is only visible to the naked eye now that lividity has set in. Give me a hand, will you?’ he said.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I have to see all of her,’ he replied, with an impatient gesture.
‘Not here, please,’ said Iriarte. He indicated the crowd outside the funeral parlour. ‘You see those people? They’re the baby’s relatives, including her mother and grandmother. We’ve had enough difficulty controlling them as it is. If they see her dead body lying on the ground, they’ll go crazy.’
‘Inspector Iriarte is right,’ said Amaia, glancing towards the crowd then looking back at San Martín.
‘Very well, but until I have her on my slab I can’t tell you if there are any other signs of violence. Make sure you are thorough when you process the crime scene; I remember working on a similar case, where a mark on a baby’s cheek turned out to be made by a button on a pillowcase. Although I can give you one piece of information that might help.’ San Martín produced a small digital device from his Gladstone bag, holding it up proudly. ‘A digital calliper,’ he explained, pulling apart the two metal prongs, and adjusting them to measure the diameter of the mark on the baby’s forehead. ‘There you are,’ he said, showing them the screen. ‘The object you’re looking for is 13.85 millimetres in diameter.’
They stood up, leaving the forensic technicians to place the rucksack inside a body bag. Amaia turned to see Judge Markina standing a few metres away, watching in silence. No doubt San Martín had notified him. Beneath his black umbrella, and in the dim light seeping through the leaden clouds, his face looked sombre; even so, she registered the sparkle in his eye, the intensity of his gaze when he greeted her. Although the gesture was fleeting, she looked nervously at San Martín then at Iriarte to see if they had noticed. San Martín was busy giving orders to his technicians and outlining the facts to the legal secretary beside him, while Iriarte was keeping a close watch on the relatives. The rumour had spread among them, and they began angrily to demand answers even as the mother’s howls of grief grew louder and louder.
‘We need to get this guy out of here now,’ declared Iriarte, motioning to one of the officers.
‘Take him directly to Pamplona,’ ordered Markina.
‘I’ll get a police van to move him there by this afternoon at the very latest, your honour. In the meantime, we’ll take him to the local police station. We’ll meet there,’ Iriarte said to Amaia.
She nodded at Markina by way of a goodbye, then started towards her car.
‘Inspector … Do you have a moment?’
She stopped in her tracks, wheeling round only to find him standing beside her, sheltering her with his umbrella.
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ This wasn’t exactly a reproach, or even a question; it had the seductive tone of an invitation, the playfulness of flirtation. The grey coat he wore over a matching grey suit, his impeccable white shirt and dark tie – unusual for him – gave him a solemn, graceful air, moderated by the lock of hair tumbling over his brow and the light covering of designer stubble. Beneath the canopy of the umbrella she felt herself being drawn into a moment of intimacy, conscious of the expensive cologne emanating from his warm skin, his intense gaze, the warmth of his smile …
Suddenly, Jonan Etxaide appeared out of nowhere.
‘Boss, the cars are all full. Could you give me a lift to the police station?’
‘Of course, Jonan,’ she replied, startled back to reality. ‘If you’ll excuse us, your honour.’
Having taken her leave, she made her way towards the car without a backward glance. Etxaide, however, turned once to contemplate Markina, who was standing where they had left him. The magistrate responded with a wave.
4
The warmth of the police station hadn’t succeeded in bringing the colour back to Iriarte’s cheeks, but at least he’d managed to change out of his wet clothes by the time Amaia arrived.
‘What did he say?’ she asked. ‘Why was he taking her body?’
‘He hasn’t said a word. He’s sitting curled up in a ball in the corner of his cell, refusing to move or speak.’
She made to leave, but when she got to the door she turned to face the inspector.
‘Do you think Esparza’s behaviour was motivated by grief, or do you believe he is involved in his daughter’s death?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ said Iriarte. ‘This could be a reaction to losing his daughter, but I can’t rule out the possibility he was trying to prevent a second autopsy, fearing it would confirm his mother-in-law’s suspicions.’ He fell silent, then sighed. ‘I can’t imagine anything more monstrous than harming your own child.’
The clear image of her mother’s face suddenly flashed into Amaia’s mind. She managed to thrust it aside only for it to be replaced by another, that of the midwife, Fina Hidalgo, breaking off newly sprouted shoots with a dirty fingernail, stained green: ‘The families mostly did it themselves; I only helped occasionally when they couldn’t bring themselves to destroy the fruit of their womb, or some such nonsense.’
‘Was the girl normal, Inspector? I mean, did she suffer from brain damage or any other disabilities.’
Iriarte shook his head. ‘Besides being premature, the doctor assured me she was a normal, healthy child.’
The holding cel
ls at the new police station in Elizondo had no bars; instead, a wall of toughened glass separated them from the reception area, allowing each compartment to be viewed from outside, and making it possible for the occupants to be filmed round the clock. Amaia and Iriarte walked along the corridor outside the cells, all of them empty save for one. As they approached the glass, they could see a man crouched on the floor at the back of the cell between the sink and the toilet. His arms were looped around his knees, his head lowered. Iriarte switched on the intercom.
‘Valentín Esparza.’
The man looked up.
‘Inspector Salazar would like to ask you a few questions.’
He lowered his face again.
‘Valentín,’ Iriarte called out, more firmly this time, ‘we’re coming in. No need to get agitated, just stay calm.’
Amaia leaned towards Iriarte. ‘I’ll go in alone, I’m in plain clothes, I’m a woman, it’s less intimidating …’
Iriarte withdrew to the adjacent room, which was set up so that he could see and hear everything that went on.
Amaia entered the cell and stood facing Esparza. After a few seconds, she asked: ‘May I sit down?’
He looked at her, thrown by the question.
‘What?’
‘Do you mind if I sit down?’ she repeated, pointing to a wooden bench along the wall that doubled as a bed. Asking permission was a sign of respect; she wasn’t treating him as a prisoner, or a suspect.
He waved a hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said, sitting down. ‘At this time of day, I’m already exhausted. I have a baby too – a little boy. He’s five months old. I know that you lost your baby girl yesterday.’ The man raised his pale face and looked straight at her. ‘How old was she?’
‘Four months,’ he said in a hoarse voice.
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
He swallowed hard, eyes downcast.
Offering to the Storm Page 2